Wisconsin Public Television University Place  Ben Sidran Jews, Music and the American Dream  November 8, 2012 UP798    cc >> I always thought that Ben Sidran was someone who needed no introduction, but then I got a call asking if I would introduce him tonight. So, it's clear that someone and someone in the higher up of the Wisconsin Book Festival either knew something that I didn't, or didn't know something that I think the rest of us did. Nonetheless, I accepted the assignment because I owe Ben a favor, because for the past six months and more, since the publication of the book he's going to talk about tonight, he has blamed me for putting him up to it. I take it that this reasoning behind this ambiguous attribution lies in the fact that some time ago I helped to arrange for Ben to teach a course at the University of Wisconsin on the subject about which he knows a lot, but one for which no syllabus existed. So, to make this story short, what Ben will talk about tonight is the course syllabus which was turned into "There Was a Fire: Jews, Music, and the American Dream," the wonderful book created from scraps of notes written over many years on napkins during seltzer breaks at jazz bars from Madrid to Marrakech. Don't ask how Ben found seltzer in Marrakech, but I'm sure he could do it. [LAUGHTER] Actually, I can tell you that the original title of the book was, "There Was a Fire: Heartburn, Indigestion and American Jewish Music." [LAUGHTER] But that would have necessitated the book being marketed under the category of ethnic home remedies. [LAUGHTER] So why does Ben Sidran need no introduction, you ask? [audience responds] Because he's the real deal. A native of Racine who's career, over several centuries, yes, think about that, has encompassed the making of music and the performing of it nationally and internationally, the recording and producing of his and other musician's music, including music of the most acclaimed musicians of several generations. He's a teacher of jazz history through his public radio programs and a variety of scholarly and popular books, including a wonderful autobiography called "A Life in the Music," and as a traveling emissary for that is which is sweet and good, by which I mean he is a force proving that music, and the arts in general, provide for us that which enriches the lives of what we loosely call humanity. 

As in his work, so in his life, which is characterized by a combination of back pain and extraordinary generosity. [LAUGHTER] And now, in semi-retirement, Ben spends his time leading the Occupy Monroe Street movement. [LAUGHTER] And he can be found on most pre-winter days sitting on a bench on the main street of his neighborhood where he would be happy to engage you in conversation once you drop a coin in his crumpled paper cup where you can still read the faded inscription that says Irving Berlin for president. [LAUGHTER] But he's here with us tonight, and I'm glad to end this unnecessary introduction by giving you our friend, our neighbor, and tonight's star, Ben Sidran. [APPLAUSE]  >> Thank you and good night. [LAUGHTER] Bob is right that I do blame him, and rightly so, because Bob actually gave me the courage to make my mistakes, my academic mistakes in public. Mostly I kept them to myself and just made my musical mistakes, but he's helped me branch out. And in honor of the occasion, I've dressed either as an author's idea of what a jazz musician looks like or a jazz musician's idea of what an author looks like. I'm not sure. [LAUGHTER] But I put this tie on, it's the first time I've worn a tie in a long time, and I did it because I want to live up to the expectations that Bob has planted in your minds. 

[LAUGHTER] The title of the book, by the way, I have to correct it. It was not whatever it was he said. [LAUGHTER] The reason the book is called "There Was a Fire," and the story is in the book, it's a story about the Baal Shem Tov, the famous rabbi from the Pale of Settlement to hundreds and hundreds of years ago. There was a crisis in the community, and the Baal Shem Tov went into the woods and he built a special fire, he said a special prayer, and he had to go to this special place, and the community was saved. And then, 50 years later, the community was again in trouble, and Baal Shem Tov was gone. So the rabbi at the time went into the forest. He knew the special place. He went there. He built the special fire, but he had forgotten the special prayer, but he said maybe it's enough, and it was, and the community was saved again. Fifty years later, another rabbi, the community's always in trouble, this is not new. 

This rabbi goes into the woods. Now he's forgotten the place. He doesn't know the prayer, but he still knows how to light the special fire. He said maybe this is enough, and it was. You know what's coming. Fifty years later, community's in trouble. Rabbi goes into the woods. Now he doesn't know the place, he doesn't know how to make the special fire, and he doesn't know the special prayer. But he says maybe just the memory that there was a fire is enough, and it was, and the community was saved. That's why it's called "There Was a Fire." It's about memory, and it's about how music captures and passes on this idea of memory. 

Now, it's not just memory of what the neuroscientists called episodic memory, how we remember specific events in our past, which is, as we all know, inaccurate and gets more and more accurate as we keep recalling the memories up. No, it's part of the emotional memory. The emotional memory is how things feel. How does it feel? And I was struck initially when I was directed to the arts residency program to teach a course which turned out to be Jews, Music, and the American Dream. I was motivated by what seemed to me a remarkable statistic, and that is how was it possible for 2% of the population, the Jews, they've never been more than 2% of the population, to be responsible for what appeared to be 80% of the popular music? Now, the 2% is a hard statistic. The 80%, of course, I made up because nobody could know... [LAUGHTER] What the contribution is. But it still, it could be an imaginary number, but to me it's an imaginary number like pi, and imaginary number of significance. And I started thinking about, it's not enough just to make a list of the Jews but what is Jewish about what they did? And thinking about this and really knocking my head against the wall because, for a start, it's very difficult to know who's Jewish. This is still a raging discussion in Israel today, who is a Jew? And of course, if anybody can convert, then we all have the inner Jew, right? So, this was the first problem, who's a Jew? What is Jewish music is another problem. 

There are no Jewish notes on the piano. We've got 88 notes. Everybody plays the same notes. So, this is a fraught question. But I came up with the following and I think that this is as good an answer as I can give you, and I'm going to give it to you right out front. 3,000 years ago when Abraham, an ordinary man, was walking through the desert and either did or did not experience an aural hallucination, at that time there were many gods, there were many life cycles. There was no real progress, there was no real future, no real past, because everything existed in this ongoing wheel of life. That's how it was seen in the olden times. And when Abraham agreed to follow the voice that spoke to him, he changed the equation dramatically. First of all, number one, he was an ordinary man just like all of us. 

He was a regular person. Number two, and I like this because this is like my 80%, if, with monotheism, I have a personal relationship with a deity, and you have a personal relationship with a deity, if A equals C and B equals C, then A equals B. Social justice. We're equal. It's a sleight of hand, but it's nice. [LAUGHTER] The fact is that the Jewish story is about social justice. It's about leaving the world in a better place than you found it. It's about understanding that to the other guy, you are the other guy. It's precedes what we consider the modern condition of alienation in a world that's moving too fast. In fact, the Jewish narrative, the story, has been said to be the root of western faith and philosophy. 

Why is a popular song important compared to this great achievement? I think it's because of something that I learned from a neuroscientist named Dan Levitin. And Dan Levitin said, you know, the core of a spiritual practice is the understanding that we're all connected, that we are all connected, that we're all somehow part of a greater story. And when you look at what a popular song is, a popular song, nine times out of ten, is about a boy and a girl holding hands. And when a boy and a girl hold hands, there's a moment of caring. They care for one another. They're connected. So, each little popular song, to me, is like one of those shards of the great mirror of life that got shattered, and according to the Doctrine of Tikkun Olam, it's our job to heal the world and put it back together. And that's why popular songs and popular music can carry, can be seen as spiritual, can deliver a quality that is elevated, and where popular culture, regular people, ordinary people become more important than the kings and queens of mythology. Now, the interesting thing about Judaism, of course, is that it's the only monotheistic religion in which it's possible to be a good Jew and not believe in God, because you can be a good person and still have your doubts and have questions. And when they say the Jews are the people of the book, the book is not the Torah with those wonderful stories, the book is the Talmud. 

The Talmud is the discussions about what the Torah means. And these discussions go on and on and on, and it's an art where a question is answered with another question. What's wrong with that? Nothing. [LAUGHTER] It's an art. It's part of the dialog, the engagement of people over a long period of time. You know in the Jewish tradition you need a minion. You need 10 men and women, or women, to be present in a room. You cannot Tweet a minion. You cannot Facebook a minion. It's about community. 

It's about being together. Okay, so, Jews, Music and the American Dream. Let's start with one of my favorite Jewish songs.  § §  § It ain't necessarily so § § No, it ain't necessarily so § § The stories you liable § § To read in the Bible § § They ain't necessarily so § § §  § Jonah, he lived in a whale § § They say Jonah § § He lived in a whale § § He made his home in § § That fish's abdomen § § They say Jonah § § He lived in a whale § § §  § They say Methuselah § § Lived 900 years § § They say Methuselah § § Lived 900 years § § But what good is living § § If no girl will give in § § To no guy who's 900 years § § §  § Moses was found in a stream § § They say Moses § § Was found in a stream § § They say he floated § § On water § § Till Ol' Pharaoh's § § Daughter § § She found him § § She said in the stream § § Of course it's possible § § That's not § § Where she found him § § Of course it's all possible § § That none of this § § Is what it says it is § § Maybe the song is a lie § § That tells the truth § § And the truth § § Is that it ain't § § Necessarily so § § The stories you liable § § To read in the Bible § § They ain't necessarily § § So § § § [APPLAUSE]  >> So here we have some Jewish themes we can parse. First of all, the obvious one is the skepticism, right? The second one, of course, is the narrative quality. Each verse is a short story. It's very interesting, because when you consider American popular music has developed this idea, this art of compression of the narrative form. And you can think of songs from "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" to Bob Dylan's songs with the phantasmagoric imagery. American popular music is about compressed stories. Now, "It Ain't Necessarily So," of course, is George Gershwin. 

It was part of his great opera "Porgy and Bess," and it's often pointed to as proof that Gershwin was connected to his Jewish roots. It's interesting, because initially when the Jews came to America in great numbers starting in the 1880s, because of the pilgrims and the Pale of Settlement, the Pale of Settlement being that great reservation for the Jews that spread over thousands and thousands of miles. They mostly wanted to be American. They wanted to start over. That's why changing your name wasn't such a big deal. Well, in fact, to Jews, my name is Ben Sidran. Why is my name Ben Sidran? Well, my grandfather, my father's father, who was in Poland, his name was Baruch Sidranski. Baruch means blessed in Hebrew. Sidranski, we think, comes from the fact that there's a little town called Sidra, and maybe a Sidranski was somebody who came from this little town of Sidra. So, for me to change my name means nothing because Ben Sidranski was a made up name. 

Similarly, many names that were given to people when they came to the United States. So what's in a name? Irving Berlin, he was Israel Baline, right? Now, over the years when people asked these composers, so tell me, what's Jewish about your success, Mr. Berlin? Irving Berlin, he wrote "Easter Parade" and "White Christmas," but okay. [LAUGHTER] What's Jewish about your great success? He said absolutely nothing. I'm an American. I do American music. They asked Gershwin the same thing, especially after the great success of "Rhapsody in Blue," which is an extraordinary piece of music where you see the conflation of the popular and the exalted in music. And Gershwin said the same thing. I'm an American composer. I write American songs. It came to seem to me that saying being a Jew has nothing to do with it was the most Jewish thing you could say in America. 

[LAUGHTER] That was the sign of an American Jew. Being Jewish has nothing to do with it. And it occurs that it's also accurate because what we think of as American is quite Jewish. I'll give you an example. The Constitution. Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. Extraordinary. I promise you, when the new Libyan constitution is written, it will not say pursuit of happiness. Pursuit of happiness is an extraordinary clause. But skip that for a minute. 

Life, liberty. I am free to proceed as I like, to do what I like, to worship or not worship as I like, to make money, that's the American dream. What about this? Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free; The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, Send these, the homeless, Tempest-tossed to me I lift my lamp beside the golden door! What about that? On the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. Where does that come in? Because suddenly, the United States is not about, you know, give me room to make my deal, give me space to enjoy myself. It's about being a home for the outsiders, the alienated of the world. Well, as you all know, that poem was written Emma Lazarus, a Jewish girl who was actually quite well off and very much an American. Her family was long established in New York City. And she happened to be walking along the docks in Lower Manhattan at one point in the 1880s when the wretched refuse from the Pale of Settlement was everywhere. And she looked at these people and she realized, there but the grace of God go I. And because she died young, many of her friends lobbied. 

There were fundraising parties to gather enough money to build the pedestal that the Statue of Liberty was placed on. The statue was a gift from France, of course, to celebrate the connection between these two great countries, but there was no money to build that little island that it's on. So the people of New York had fundraisers, and one of them, Emma Lazarus, wrote this poem, and because of this poem and what it meant to all the activity, it was put on the Statue of Liberty. So, this aspect of social justice that we now absolutely claim is our own is part of the Jewish narrative. When I say the Jewish narrative, I mean it literally. It's a story. It's a narrative. I give talks sometimes in synagogues and I'm up on the bimah, and I always look over my shoulder when I say this because I do say it, it's possible God doesn't exist. It's possible. I'm just saying maybe there isn't one all-knowing being that knows what each one of us is thinking at all times, not only here but in Alpha Centauri and wherever there are sentient beings throughout the universe, all of us at once, and I, frankly my personal opinion is it would have to include the dogs and the cats and the birds and maybe even the vegetables, I don't know. 

[LAUGHTER] Sentience is slippery. It's tricky. It's possible it doesn't exist. If it does exist, it's truly a miracle. But if there is no God, if God doesn't exist, then God is just a story. And that means we worship a narrative. We worship a narrative. And that, to me, is maybe even more miraculous that humans have such a need for a context, a larger overarching reason to be part of something to exist. That's a bigger miracle. I think that's what's going on. 

And I think that's what the Jews have delivered in terms of memory, in terms of the American dream, and in terms of popular music. Another little break for another Jewish song.  § §  [APPLAUSE]  Thank you. That's some Jewish music. Written by the great Harold Arlen. The words were by Yip Harburg. Just in passing, of course, it was from "he Wizard of Oz." The original story, "The Wizard of Oz" had no rainbow in it. The rainbow was put in "The Wizard of Oz" by Yip Harburg, who wrote that whole middle scene with the munchkins, and all that sort of thing. And this was their song. And who better but a couple of displaced New York Jews in Hollywood to write a song about missing home and wanting to be just no place like home. 

Click your shoes. There's no place like home. Now, there is a Jewish move, and Cole Porter referred to it at one point when he said that he had to learn how to write Jewish in order to be successful. He was not Jewish. The Jewish move, many think, is playing minor music, playing sad music. That's not the Jewish move. That's a universal move. You find minor music all over the world in every culture. Minor music is not peculiar. What is peculiar is the minor and the major in context with each other. 

You see, the great Russian composer Shostakovich once said the Jews have a gift for smiling through the tears. And this concept, again, the need for a greater context, nothing is simply this or that, nothing exists without context, is a key to the Jewish perspective, just as, in the Talmud, the discussion is more important than the details of the story. The emotional memory is more important than the episodic memory. So too, the context of the minor and the major make a very rich and textured kind of popular music, and that's what American popular music is. When you consider what popular music was before the American century, the 20th century and the 19th century, you have English music halls, you have Viennese waltzes, primarily, but they're generally major, pretty upbeat type of songs. Now, that's not totally true. You had Stephen Foster who was a brilliant, brilliant composer, but, by and large, there is a Jewish move. And let me just show you what it is very briefly.  Okay, here's a minor scale. § § Did I say a minor scale? Okay, here's a major scale. 

§ § Okay? Here's a minor scale. § §  True. Check this out. § § C major. Here's a minor scale. § § A minor. Lurking within every scale is both a minor and a major, and the only thing that makes it one or the other is the context. In this case, the context is provided by the note I play on my left hand. If I play this note... § § It's major. 

If I play this note... § § It's minor. Same notes. So, the human context is what makes something major or minor. By itself, it's neither. I'll give you an example of where this plays into. § §  That's minor. § § Here we go. § § That one chord... § § Major, and the sun comes out and everything changes emotionally. 

§ § Now, that, too, is Gershwin, and the theme was written, initially, not for "Porgy and Bess." It was written for a play, a Yiddish play, called "The Dybbuk." Gershwin had a very interesting trajectory. He quit school when he was 15. He wanted to be a musician. He started hanging out in Harlem. I don't have time to really go into it, but, really, popular culture in American, not just popular music but I think popular culture in general, is a product of the blacks and Jews coming together in this country because the blacks and the Jews contextualized each other in a very profound way. When the Jews got here, they had a story that encapsulated the idea of slavery. They had been freed. And, of course, the African Americans, well, there was an oral tradition. There was nothing written down. They had been stripped of their language, stripped of their music, stripped of everything. 

They had no context for what was happening to them. So the Jewish narrative was very important. But likewise, Black Americans were real, true Americans, and it was a way for Jews to be become American and, at the same time, to identify with this principle of social justice. So, if you look at the arc of the 20th century, one of the greatest tragedies, of course, is what happened in the '60s with the falling out between blacks and Jews. But the overarching context of popular culture is blacks and Jews. And, as I say, Gershwin originally wrote that melody for his play, a Yiddish play, "The Dybbuk," but he couldn't get the rights to it, so he used the same melody for "Summertime," in "Porgy and Bess."  And you know, there's not just a theoretical premise for Jewish popular music. From the very beginning, there's been a very practical premise for it. As a matter of fact, one of the earliest Jewish songs, written in, I think, 1907, give or take a couple of years, was written by a man whose original name was Gumm. He was part of the great songwriting team-- Oh, man, can you believe my mind just went south on this guy, who I've been talking about for four months? No matter. [LAUGHTER] In 1907, something like that, the Jewish paper record The Forward wrote a series of articles on baseball to help the new immigrants become Americanized. 

And so the songwriting business was a pennies business. Most legitimate businesspeople wouldn't have anything to do with it. It was kind of like the film business. You know how the film business started. You know Thomas Edison invented the movie process, and then these little Moviolas started popping up all over. And in Manhattan they were put primarily in clothing stores. They'd move some of the clothing out of the way, and these Jewish businessmen would put Moviolas in there, and pretty soon they were making so much money on the Moviolas that they moved the clothing out altogether. [LAUGHTER] Now, who were these shop owners? Well, most of them had come, virtually all of them, from the Pale of Settlement. How did they get into the clothing business? Well, in the Pale of Settlement they weren't allowed to own a business, they weren't allowed to vote, they weren't allowed to be citizens. The only thing they could do was collect rags and sew them and make clothes out of them. 

So, when they came to the United States in the 1890s, whenever it was, miraculously, the sewing machine had been invented. So, now, they had the skill, they got some technology, and you see pictures on the Lower East Side of all these Jews walking around with their sewing machine, and in their little apartments. If you go to New York, you have to go to the Tenement Museum. You can't believe the size of the space that eight, nine, ten, eleven people lived in and worked in. It's extraordinary. But they started making clothes, and within five years, they had invented exact sized clothing. Up until then, if you wanted to look good, you had to have a tailor. They made it possible to buy clothes off the rack. They democratized fashion. They enabled the middle class by that. 

Not through some strategic planning. It's just part of the narrative. So, again, the movie business, by 1920, all of the major studios in Hollywood were run by Jews who grew up within 200 miles of Warsaw, Poland. Similarly, the music publishing business, the songwriting business, these were businesses that legit white shoe law firms, etc, wouldn't have any part of. Okay, so here we are. I'm going to remember this guy's name if we have to sit here for 10 minutes. That's it. [LAUGHTER] Von Tilzer. Albert Von Tilzer. There we go. 

It didn't take 10 minutes. Brother of Harry Von Tilzer, right? You know that. [LAUGHTER] Their original name was Gumm. It was Harry Gumm and Albert Gumm. Like Judy Gumm, Judy Garland. It was distant relatives. They changed it to Von Tilzer for professional reasons because to be German was a better start. So, The Forward wrote this article about baseball. And you can just imagine these people reading in The Forward in Yiddish. Strike two, strike three, you slide, you steal home. 

[LAUGHTER] Right? So, Albert wrote a song about baseball. If you listen to it, and you know the words, it's not about baseball.  § §  [APPLAUSE] Thank you.  I purposely played that as a ballad, a heart-wrenching ballad, because I think that if you look at a lot of these Jewish compositions, I talked about the smiling through their tears, but a lot of them, if you slow them down, they're just tragic. And if you speed them up, it's a party. [LAUGHTER] Another example is Harold Arlen's "Forget Your Troubles, Come On Get Happy." § Forget your troubles § § Come on get happy § § Chase all your cares away § Just briefly, I have to do this. [LAUGHTER]  § § [playing with a slow tempo] § Forget your troubles § § Come on § § Get happy § § § § Chase all your cares away § § § § Sing hallelujah § § Come on get happy § § § § We're headed § § For the judgment day § § §  § The sun is shining § § Come on § § Get happy § § § § Lord is waiting § § To take your hand § § § § Shout hallelujah § § Come on get happy § § § § We're headed § § To the promised land § § §  § Now, we're headed § § Across that river § § You throw your sins away § § In the tide § § § § Because it's all § § So peaceful § § On the other side § § §  Well, you get the idea. § § [APPLAUSE] Thank you. So, we have to telescope the history because this book, well, I don't know if I'm dressed as an author's idea of a jazz musician, or a jazz musician's idea of an author, and this book is something similar. I approached it like a jazz musician. 

It's an improvisation, really, on these things that we're talking about here. And I traced the themes decade by decade. In the first decade, you have these Yiddish speakers writing about getting lost in the crowd going to the baseball game. In the '20s, you have this drive to create the New York opera. You have Jerome Kern writing "Showboat," an Earth-shattering event, really, when you think about the text of "Showboat" where the curtain goes up and you see a huge party of African Americans on the levee singing. Not something upbeat, but "Ol' Man River."  The goal was to write the great American opera, they called it. In the '30s, of course, it was all about swing music, and it was about the most unlikely Jewish hero that ever came down the pike. You know, before teenage girls screamed for Justin Timberlake. [LAUGHTER] Before they screamed for Elvis Presley, before they screamed for Frank Sinatra, they screamed for this little narrow, near-sighted Bar Mitzvah boy playing the clarinet named Benny Goodman. It was incredible. 

This guy, he's playing clarinet, he looks like an accountant, and the girls are screaming. [LAUGHTER] Go figure. The story moves on, and in the '40s it was this great liberation following World War II of all the culture. And there was a feeling in the Jewish community, of course this was before the full impact of the Holocaust was known, because that was not known right away. But there was this feeling of victory and of the ability to participate fully in America. The '50s, of course, was the great coming out of the Jews, the era of the nose jobs. [LAUGHTER] Really, the reason why Barbra Streisand was so important for Jews was specifically because she didn't change her nose, and in popular music, that went a long way to saying something. It was a statement. Of course, in the '50s it was all about romance, and all these little narratives are about boys and girls and holding hands and opportunity. I'm sure you had bad guys, dangerous guys like the "Leader of the Pack," but you saw no Jewish singers. 

What happened to the Jews in the '50s? Because rock and roll, quite clearly, is a southern white Baptist form in its primary incarnation. "Be-Bop-A-Lula She's My Baby" was not written by Cole Porter nor George Gershwin. [LAUGHTER] But all the hits of Elvis Presley were written by Leiber and Stoller and Carole King and Sherry Goffin, and all these Jewish songwriting couples throughout the '50s wrote, again, my number is 80%, I'm sticking to it, 80% of the popular music was written by Jews. The '60s, well you can't go through the '60s without talking about Bob Dylan. And if the '50s were about romance, the '60s were about love. And if you were there, I don't have to say anymore. [LAUGHTER] It was remarkable. And Dylan was remarkable beyond that, because he did something that changed everything. It's never been the same since. And that is instead of writing a song about ordinary people, he wrote songs about himself. 

When you heard a Bob Dylan song, you believed it was about Bob Dylan. There was this authenticity in Bob Dylan. And this is an interesting word that starts coming out. Authenticity, what does it mean to be an authentic Jew in America? What does it mean to be an authentic American? What's authentic about our situation? And when we heard Bob Dylan's voice, we say, ah, man, somebody's finally telling the truth, being himself, being raw. Except that wasn't his voice, and his name wasn't Bob Dylan, it was Bob Zimmerman. And he was being facetious when he said he had a large nose because he was part Cherokee Indian. Bob Dylan was a lie that told the truth. And he made it possible, not possible, he made it necessary for all the songwriters who came after them to write their own songs and pretend to be that person. Right? He once said I killed off the professional songwriter, and he did. Suddenly the floodgates opened. 

He made all the punk music possible. He made rap music possible. He made what we know of as the music in last part of the 20th century possible by this illusion of authenticity.  I've got to play a Dylan song.  There are so many great Dylan songs because his words are fabulous. Just like Irving Berlin was a genius of popular parlance, his songs, like he wrote "Alexander's Ragtime Band," it's incredible when you think about it. He came to the United States. He was like four or five years old, spoke Yiddish, that was it. By the time he was 19 years old, he had written "Alexander's Ragtime Band." He wrote "Blue Skies" in his early 20s. I've been trying for 20 years to learn Spanish, and I can barely order a meal. 

He learned how American English, as opposed to British English, how that language swings. Our language swings. And if you listen to Bob Dylan's lyrics, well here's an example of a Bob Dylan lyric. Johnny's in the basement Mixing up the medicine I'm on the pavement Thinking about the government The man in the trench coat Badge out, laid off Says he's got a bad cough Wants to get it paid off Look out kid It's something you did God knows when But you're doing it again You better duck down the alley way Looking for a new friend The man in the coon-skin cap In the big pen Wants eleven dollar bills You only got ten... That swings. That is some street talk. So the question has always been, so who's Bob Dylan? Is he a Jewish person? Is he born again? Who is this person? And he's wonderfully slippery in answering these questions. He's clearly a very Jewish writer. As a matter of fact, becoming born again is a very Jewish move. Irving Berlin had Christmas trees. 

It's a very Jewish move. What's being Jewish got to do with it? Absolutely nothing. But there is a song that Dylan wrote, and it's a very important song because it's a song about, well, I think the song is about being in the present moment, being there when you're called upon. And this is the subtext of the most holy day in the Jewish calendar, the High Holidays. And the Torah passage is the binding of Isaac, and it talks about Abraham taking his son up on the mountain because God has told him to kill his son. And Abraham does it. Well, fortunately, just before he's about to murder his son, an angel calls and says, just kidding. Just kidding. Just wanted to see, you know, if you were with us or not. Okay, you don't have to kill him. 

It's a terrible story, and it's a very troubling story, but what it signifies, historically to the Jews, and obviously to Dylan, is to be present when you're called, to be present. And I think it pretty much encapsulates what the '60s was about for a lot of us. To be present when you're called. § §  § Well, God said to Abraham § § Kill me a son § § Abe said § § Man you gotta be § § Putting me on § § God said no § § Abe said what § § God said § § Do what you want, Abe § § But the next time I come § § § § You better run § § § § Well, Abe said § § Where you want this § § Killing done § § God said Highway 61 § § Now, Georgia Sam § § He had a bloody nose § § And the Welfare Department § § They give him § § No more clothes § § He asked poor Howard § § Said where can I go § § Howard said § § There's just one place § § That I know § § Tell me quick, said Sam § § § § I got to run § § § § Ol' Howard just pointed § § With his gun § § He said back down § § Highway 61 § § §  § Now the fifth daughter § § On the twelfth night § § Told the first father § § That things weren't right § § My complexion, she said § § Is much too white § § He said come over here, baby § § Step into the light § § Hmm, you're right § § Let me tell § § The second mother § § That this has been done § § § § But the second mother § § Was with the seventh son § § And they were both § § Having fun on Highway 61 § § Like the roving gambler § § Who was very bored § § He was trying to start § § The next world war § § He found a promoter § § Who nearly § § Fell off the floor § § He said I never engaged § § In this kind of thing before § § But yes, I think § § It can be § § Very easily done § § § § We just put up § § Some bleachers § § Out in the sun § § And we have it all § § Back down on Highway 61 § § § [APPLAUSE]  These were my notes for the evening. [LAUGHTER] I think I did it. And, well, the story goes on. And the question remains, what's the future of American popular culture and the role of the Jewish narrative in that culture?  My book includes very much in keeping with the title. When you look at the music today, it seems desperately thin. It seems an inch deep and a mile wide. But my conclusion is maybe we don't know where to build the fire, and maybe we don't know the special prayer, and maybe we don't know where to build the fire, but just the memory that there was fire will be sufficient, and, again, the community will be saved. 

Thank you. [APPLAUSE]